Territorial Awareness
"After familiarizing himself with a chosen environment, Wakaji essentially turns himself into a living radar. No one and nothing moving or leaving within this territory will ever escape his attention." :: -Entry on Crissol's gift Territorial Awareness is Wakaji's gift to discern anything within his environment, along with anything from those he is familiar with. A useful ability, he uses this for a myriad of purposes. Description Though it functions by letting him perceive things from his own psyche's perspective, Wakaji's talent is not mental in that it does not influence and read anything from other beings' minds. Rather, it allows him to pinpoint their location in the physical world using a psychic sense that scans his vicinity in a manner not unlike a radar. Because it does not affect the mind in any way, it is among the very few supernatural gifts that cannot be blocked by Bella's Mental Shield. At its rawest use, Territorial Awareness creates a sphere of invisible psychic energy centered on Wakaji's location. Anything, both living or otherwise, that enters, moves, or in any way present within the borders of this sphere immediately falls into its user's awareness, even if Wakaji could see but was looking the other way, or even not looking at all. This means that even if a dome was centered on his location and secluding him from the rest of his surroundings, he'd still know what's on the other side of it for as long as it's within the reach of his "territory". Even the presence of other supernatural powers (i.e. Jane's and Alec's) within the sphere is not exempted from Wakaji's gift, allowing him to determing the range of said powers as well as potenrially learn how they operate. Because of this, Wakaji seems to have no blindspots, as this gift gives him a full 360 degrees vision of his surroundings, making it very difficult to sneak up on him. This was made even more by the fact that the "sphere" is always active. In battle, he generally uses this to his advantage by first knowing the locations of his enemies in proximity with him, which is useful if at least some, or all, of them are hiding in plain sight.He can then decimate their numbers using calculated assaults that makes use of the measured distance between him and his adversaries to each other. Outside of battle, Wakaji can use this to scan his surroundings. The sphere only actually extends to several kilometers from where he's at, but by familiarizing himself with a chosen location, he can extend the field to encompass the entire environment, and may actually allow him to "read" what the recipients are doing while within his territory. Likewise, if he focuses enough, Wakaji can also use it to identify disguises and other forms of concealment. It is also very useful to compensate for his blindness, having refined it to the degree where he can actually sense details, such as faint traces of ink printed paper, or intricate designs made on the surface of objects, allowing him to discerm words and shapes on such surfaces. A useful aspect of this skill is that once Wakaji becomes so familiar with a given location to the point that he becomes "bonded" with it, he no longer needs to be within its vicinity in order to get a feel from it, alerting him whenever something were to happen around the places in question, even if he were miles away. Perhaps this gift's greatest aspect is that Wakaji can mold the psychic energy to form it into a thin layer covering his entire body and actually overlapping the surface of his skin. When it's like this, the limited amount of the energy's surface area makes Wakaji extremely reactive to anything that would try to penetrate it, boosting his already formidable vampire reflexes to greater heights. It is also useful for tracking. Limitations As powerful as it is, the psychic sense afforded to her by Territorial Awareness only functions within the domain of her own familiar territory, be it personal or literal. He also cannot sense anything within it in the way he does with his natural senses (i.e. sight and hearing) but perceives it (or them) in an outline present within his mind's eye not unlike a sonar radar. Also, Wakaji claims that his gift does not allow him to identify colors. Origin Back when Wakaji was a human, he was very proficient in Maai, which is Japanese, is a term in martial arts used to describe to fully comprehend the distance between fighters, not to mention everything else within the vicinity. This basically means that a skilled practitioner can "scan" his or her surroundings without having to rely on the five natural senses, as Maai gives access to a "sixth sense" of sorts. In Wakaji's case, being born blind granted him considerable aptitude in the skill, using it to compensate for his disability, and even achieved great recognition from the Minamoto Clan because of it, contributing greatly to his skills at swordsplay. This discipline would later become the basis of his vampiric talent later on. Similar Abilities *Edward's Telepathy is similar to Wakaji's gift in that it allows him to read aspects beyond the reach of his natural senses. The only difference being: Edwards, talent allows him to read people. Wakaji's enable him to read space. *Julien's gift is similar to Wakaji's. However it is less focused since it does not operate within a psychic sphere centered on the user's location. It merely manifests as a sensation coupled with her enhanced senses to assist her in finding that which she seeks. Category:Special Abilities